The present application relates generally to improved gypsum products and their methods of manufacture. More particularly, it relates to use of elemental detection in gypsum manufacturing processes.
Gypsum boards have been used extensively in the construction of both residential and commercial buildings. A typical gypsum board comprises a gypsum core disposed between two sheets of a paper (e.g., multi-ply paper), fiber glass mat, or cardboard material, known as facing layers. The conventional manufacturing of gypsum board for use in wall and roofing materials is well known and generally involves forming a core layer of wet slurry between the two layers of facing materials. When the wet core sets and is dried, a strong, rigid, and fire-resistant building material results.
The increasing production and quality demands in gypsum manufacturing processes, particularly gypsum wallboard processes, have resulted in a need for improvements to the speed and accuracy of quality control processes. Existing quality control processes rely on extractive sampling from gypsum slurry. These samples then are transported to a separate laboratory for further analysis. By the time the results are received, however, the production run has long-since been completed. Historically, engineers have overcome these deficiencies by manually controlling the rates of raw feed materials based to produce a product having the desired physical properties. Thus, there remains a perceived need in the art for improved methods for the manufacture of gypsum wallboard, particularly methods that will improved the quality and consistency of gypsum wallboard.